Saturday, February 21, 2009

Back in August of 2005, when I first heard about the National Do Not Call Registry, I registered every phone number I had. I registered my home phone, my cell phone, Steve's cell phone, Rachel's cell phone, my work numbers (and there are many of them).

And I still have the email confirmations to prove it.

Even so, a few months ago, we started getting more and more calls from toll free numbers or unknown name, unknown numbers or weird area codes. At first, I didn't think a lot about it because it was election season and I figured it was political calls and polls.

But as they persisted, I started googling the phone numbers and discovered that many of the calls were in fact telemarketers.

This then begged the question, why are they calling me if I'm on the no call list? I am on the no call list, aren't I?

So I checked. And oh so mysteriously, I seem to have fallen off the no call list. Not all my numbers, just my home number. That number wasn't registered. WTF?

So I re-registered it. But, there's a delay between the time you register and the time the telemarketers have to stop calling. It seems like they know that they're going to have to stop so the calling just gets more and more frenzied.

Which leads me to Wednesday. Wednesday, Steve was home, getting frustrated with his computer. This frustration was exacerbated by the fact that the phone kept ringing all day. So now, he's frustrated with the computer and with the phone. Not a good combination.

Finally, he was over it. The phone rang again, at 7:40 pm. He glanced at the caller id, saw a number he didn't recognize, answered the phone and shouted into it, "Don't call here again!!!!"